Austrian dairy group SalzburgMilch is planning to join forces with local peer Pinzgau Milch Produktions.
In a joint statement yesterday (24 November), the companies said they are “deepening their existing collaboration and planning a strategic merger, with the goal of creating a joint company”.
SalzburgMilch and Pinzgau have worked together on the manufacture of various dairy products. The deal awaits the approval of Austrian competition officials.
Markus Buchmayr, managing director of Pinzgau, said: “The merger allows us to optimally utilise synergies, implement future-oriented plans and simultaneously further strengthen the regionality and quality of our products in order to remain successful in the domestic market as well as in the export market, which is so important to us.”
The two dairies receive milk from around 3,400 suppliers.
All their sites in Salzburg, Lamprechtshausen, Maishofen and Kössen in Tyrol will remain in operation and further developed, the companies said.
SalzburgMilch, Austria’s third-largest dairy group, sources milk from around 2,400 farming suppliers. It markets more than 600 products.
The company has production plants in Salzburg and Lamprechtshausen and employs around 450 people. It processes 331 million kilograms of milk annually.
In 2024, SalzburgMilch generated sales of €350m ($405m), more than 40% of which was generated through exports.
Pinzgau, headquartered in Maishofen, is a contract manufacturer of dairy products including drinking milk, butter, yogurt and cheese. It reported a turnover of €155m in 2024, with exports making up 47% of its sales.
The company employs around 250 people and is supplied by about 1,000 farms Nearly 60% of the milk is organic.
Its plants are in Maishofen, Salzburg, and Kössen, Tyrol.
Andreas Gasteiger, the managing director of SalzburgMilch, said: "We are pooling our resources to secure the long-term viability of the farming structure and to keep added value within the region."
A deal would follow other mergers in Europe's dairy industry in the last 12 months. In April, Arla Foods and German dairy cooperative DMK Group announced plans to merge.
The pair said in a joint statement that the deal will create “the largest dairy cooperative in Europe”, with members in Denmark, Sweden, the UK, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
Last December, Dutch dairy cooperative FrieslandCampina set out plans to merge with smaller Belgian peer Milcobel.
They said that based on the companies’ combined 2023 annual figures - excluding Milcobel’s Ysco business, which has been divested - the new organisation would have a pro-forma revenue of more than €14bn.
